NEW YORK — Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from jail Friday and will be held under house arrest near the former World Trade Center after the luxury apartment where he had arranged to stay fell through because the neighbors objected to the media frenzy.

Prosecutors said he will be temporarily housed in a building on a small street in lower Manhattan within the Police Department’s “Ring of Steel” — a network of private and police cameras near where the Twin Towers once stood.

While he is there, his family and lawyers will look for a more permanent place for him to await trial on charges he tried to rape a hotel maid.

Shuttle crew to take close-up look at damaged tile

HOUSTON — NASA ordered Endeavour’s crew to take an unusual close-up look at a damaged tile in the space shuttle’s delicate heat shield early Saturday morning.

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Using the shuttle’s robotic arm, astronauts will scrutinize the gouge on the shuttle’s underbelly with a high resolution camera and a laser attached to a boom.

“There’s nothing alarming here and we’re not really concerned,” said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the shuttle mission management team that decided Friday to order what’s called a “focused inspection.”

Cain said the two-hour maneuver is being done out of an abundance of caution and won’t cause any disruption to the crew or its 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

The damaged tile was spotted in photos snapped by the station crew just before the shuttle linked up Wednesday. Initially, the photos showed seven sites with dings or gouges, but six of them were further analyzed and turned out not to be a problem.

Freedom Riders get place in history 50 years later

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Freedom Riders who were attacked in Alabama’s capital city on May 20, 1961, returned 50 years later to be hailed as heroes and have a museum dedicated at the old bus station where they were confronted by an angry white mob.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, said he teared up Friday when he walked through the old Greyhound station where he was beaten and knocked unconscious.

“It says something about the distance we’ve come and the progress we’ve made in this state and nation,” Lewis said.

That change was evident in former Alabama Gov. John Patterson. In 1961, he called the Freedom Riders fools and agitators when they set out to integrate Southern bus stations. But the 89-year-old ex-governor welcomed them Friday and praised them for bringing needed changes.

“It took a lot of nerve and guts to do what they did,” Patterson said after meeting 10 Freedom Riders for the first time.

The Freedom Riders were mostly college students, blacks and whites, who set out on Greyhound and Trailways buses across the South to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregation in public transportation facilities.

Brazilian takes crown as world’s oldest person

SAO PAULO — A 114-year-old Brazilian woman is the world’s oldest living human, Guinness World Records said Wednesday.

Maria Gomes Valentim attributes her longevity to eating a daily roll of bread for breakfast along with fruit — though she indulges in the occasional nip of wine.

Guinness said that Valentim, aged 114 years and 313 days, is 48 days older than the person previously considered the world’s oldest human, Besse Cooper from Monroe, Georgia.